Beyond ColorblindSample

Restoring Our Stories

We need to recognize what we are meant to be in our ethnic stories and identities so that we can ask Jesus to restore us. It’s not only about being racially aware and sensitive so that we can be cross-culturally savvy navigators of multiethnic groups. It’s also about Jesus redeeming and restoring our ethnic identities. This makes for a compelling narrative that causes non-Christians to ask us about our faith as they wonder, How could that kind of hope and healing be available to me?

When Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, she responds with astonished cynicism: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (John 4:9). Jesus’ attempts at conversation are parried by the woman’s multiple pointed questions about their people’s historic ethnic tensions. But by choosing to speak with her, Jesus the Messiah is embodying what Israel was meant to be: the priesthood nation and light to the Gentiles. 

Jesus is redeeming what it means to be an Israelite Jew. And as the Samaritan woman experiences Jesus redeeming his people’s ethnicity, she starts to desire such living water. Jesus is transforming the disciples’ understanding of what it meant to be Jewish and the Samaritan woman’s understanding of what it meant to be Samaritan. Ethnicity no longer serves as the confines of mission. It becomes the vehicle, the sacred vessel in which God’s story comes to light.

Our ethnic stories are rarely formed in isolation. They often involve encounters and altercations with those around us. It’s knowing our ethnic stories and the ethnic identity narratives of those around us that helps us realize the complexity of values, scars, trigger points, and words to avoid. It helps us know more how to sensitively share the gospel and boldly invite even those that were considered ethnic enemies or strangers to become believers.

Knowing and owning our ethnic narratives helps us understand the real issues of injustice, racial tension, and disunity that exist in the world. Ethnicity awareness helps us ask the question of how to prophetically engage in pursuing justice, racial reconciliation, and caring for the poor while we give the reason for our hope: Jesus, the great reconciler of a multiethnic people.

Jesus, I lay down my presuppositions and idolatries about what it has meant to have my culture and heritage. Sanctify my ethnic story, and bring healing to it. Help me to love my enemy and the stranger with Christ-like love so that they too may come to know the power of the gospel.